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Makin' Tracks Story of the Transcontinental Railroad in pictures and words w/ DJ
Makin Tracks Story of the Transcontinental Railroad in the picures and words of the men who were there. By Lynne Rhodes Mayer & Kenneth Vose.
216 Pages
Hard cover with Dust Jacket Dust jacket has damage around edges, back flap has black tape.
Copyright 1975.
This extraordinary piece of Americana preserves a unique juncture in the nation's history, the moment of transition from the freewheeling pioneer (lays of the past to the industrialized present and future. For the building of the "great iron highway" that linked East and West marked the beginning of the end of the American frontier. As the transcontinental railroad wound its way across the mountains and over the plains, it finally broke the Indian resistance that had previously discouraged immigration, and thus cleared the way for the waves of settlers that followed to tame the West once and for all.
The construction of a transcontinental railroad had long been planned, but the route had been a subject of ferocious dispute because those who owned property along the line stood to make fortunes. The Civil War solved the argument, for the North needed ready access to the West.
A few of those who sponsored the railroad dreamed of a united and prosperous America spanning the continent. But for most-especially for developers and speculators who were not too scrupulous-the road was an unparalleled opportunity for enormous personal gain. MAKIN' TRACKS documents the machinations of some of these men-but it also documents the achievements of others. Against enormous odds, a motley crew of Chinese, black, and immigrant Irish laborers, joined toward the end by a pious group of Mormons, succeeded in spanning torrents and canyons, blasting through the granite walls of the Sierra Nevada, negotiating swamps and quicksand, fighting mountain blizzards, and constructing virtually instant towns along the path of the railroad.
This book tells the heroic and scandalous story of the transcontinental railroad in the words of contemporary diaries, newspaper accounts, speeches, reminiscences, handbills, official testimony, government reports, and gossip. But the words are only part of the book. Its heart is a remarkable group of photographs that reveal the engineering feats and the life-styles of the men who built the road and of those who profited from it. The photographs were brought to the attention of the public in 1968 in Harold Mayer's award-winning documentary film Movin' On, a history of railroading. While doing research for this film, the authors came across a collection of original glass photographic plates relating to the building of the transcontinental railroad. Many of the plates were the work of A. J. Russell, a member of the Union Pacific Photographic Corps. The prints made from these plates proved to be breathtaking -a landmark in the photographer's art as well as an invaluable record of a crucial phase in the history of America.
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